Motorcycle Forums

Interesting..

... in the final assessment, the Super Ten hardly gets a look in. Have Yamaha misjudged the market? The dynamics? Or the price point? For me I'd have to look at a mighty number of options before I'd get to the Super Ten. For offroad touring, as opposed to touring with an offroad-styled machine, I think all these machines (with the possible exception of the KTM) are out ofthe picture, and the F800GS or XT660R Tenere would be a better bet. But what use are all the gadgets and gizmos if they don't add functionality to the machine? Do mode selectors actually make any difference in the real world, or are they an electronic marketing toy?

Have to agree with the other two comments. These might be brilliant bikes in their own right, but they are essentially restyled touring machines. Great for taller riders and probably better on the occasional untarmaced road, but I don't think many are fooled by the marketing used to sell these bikes. I'd rather ride a CG125 off road than any of these machines.

the meaning of ADVENTURE

sorry MCN, but it feels like Ducati is stakeholder in your magazin. If you label it "all-rounder" ok, but not adventure. here are some ideas from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure very poor test....

Snobbery..??

First of all, can we actually define "adventure" and what it is? to one man it will mean something completely different to the next man, why does an adventure have to involve off road riding?

would riding to Australia via asphalt and hard packed roads not be an adventure?

Most of the guys who chirp in and slag these things off probably ride to their local weekend meet about 50 mile away and stand there suppin tea all day, and are scared to death to try anything else in fear that they might just actually enjoy it, and therefore selling their gixxer would instantly lose them 3 inch off their penis...

As for jumping on the band wagon, are all us sports bike riders not on a very long band wagon with our our "one piece race suits" "knee sliders" "dark visors" "full race systems" i could go on, do we need all them ? no we dont, so lets not knock others for wanting and tryoing summat different!!

Basically, we're all sports bike snobs over here and if you aint riding the latest, fastest superbike then you're a nobody, Ive just come back from a 2500 mile round trip to Switzerland via the black forest in southern Germany with ten mates, and to be honest we probably only seen a handful of thou superbikes, all the rest were either GS style bikes or tourers..

The myth of GS

The myth of GS been the best touring bike has ended since TENERE re-appeared in the market. People were buying GS cos they never had any alternative. KTM is off road focused but has a bad reputation of breakdown any time. Ducati is road oriented and in my opinion the designer was confused what to design, a touring bike a supermottard or a on off road! BMW was well presented as solid and strong bikes do it all, but remember how many recall this bike has the last few years. Gearbox, tire pressure sensors electrical problems, brake lines and so on. The strong BMW promotion campaign was so good organised that they reversed the problematic shaky oil burner engine as a big success. I can go for long but this is not my space. Yamaha has long history of successful bikes reliable with almost no faults at all. Tenere will definitely over throne BMW in the long run for the simple reson it will run forever and do its job with minimal cost.

Your Video test confirms what i set above. you choose the ducati as the best bike though there is no off roar ability on that bike it is just another SM with several modes for road use, but then why not having an RT or a GT-R or an FJR?

what is acutially the reason for an emergency start button on Ducati? Is there any issue with Ducati electronics failures? those who owned a Ducati knows. 

Michael Anastasiou

Cyprus